


Searching

by amoama



Series: Punk Band AU [2]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 20:23:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4934029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little punkAU intro. Athelstan walks into a bar. Ragnar's band is on stage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Searching

He hadn’t meant to come in. He was on his way home. He walked past this venue every evening and most nights there was some up and coming band’s new sound blaring out. He’s ducked his head in a couple of times, stood at the back near the bar, chatted to the kid who collects the glasses. Even that feels like enough of a transgression. This place is seedy, dank, full of dangerous germs. He knows that if he told anyone he came here, it would be forbidden to him, or frowned upon so heavily that it may as well be forbidden but he keeps coming back. Listening to the music, alternately raging or soothing, exciting or consoling. He never realised he was waiting for something until tonight. Until the sound that reached the street also somehow reached into his soul.

The room is full of smoke and the sound comes from everywhere, a deep calling. The singer’s voice is low, almost a whisper but it infiltrates Athelstan’s senses, pulling at him even though he can’t understand the words. Can’t even identify the language. The fog lifts a little and the voice is illuminated, given sight to a sweat-shiny, kilt-clad figure straining over the mic. He moves in lilting waves, back and forth, up and down, unaware that the mic doesn’t follow him half the time so his voice comes in waves too. Athelstan strains in response, overpowered by the need to get closer. The singer’s eyes roam, sly and searching over the crowd, round the stage. He’s looking for something, something that he despairs of finding. Eyes that anticipate disappointment but scan ever onwards nonetheless. Athelstan knows that look.

The crowd pulls at him, pulsing with the crashing beat provided by the drum kit. Athelstan tears his eyes from the singer to take in the others on stage. The drummer has sunken eyes and only seems to be using one arm. He is grinning rafishly into the crowd. The keyboardist is a tall, impish figure, playing only at random intervals interspersed with squeals of laughter. Athelstan can’t tell if they’re choreographed or not. The singer smiles a little to himself, seemingly in reaction to the laughter and it works somehow in ramping up the pressure in the room, the air of holy madness and too honest surrender. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes unpleasant listening, but the entire room is lifted by it, circling up and up as the singer’s voice becomes clearer and clearer, a melody erupting out of the chaos. Beneath the singer the band members start to chant. The bassist to the left of the stage is a huge, glaring, mass of a man. Long dark hair and covered to the hips in a poncho of fur. Sweat drenches him and he looks like he hates everything. He stares only at the singer and plays with a bitter fury that the singer’s voice rides. Athelstan senses the power of that voice, it has the key to this raging music, this deep, wretched chanting, gathering and releasing it all so that a song can be heard, a message can be given. There are others on stage. A lithe, elegant, woman with a tambourine whose voice echoes around the room when she sings into her mic. Two blond giants play guitars beside her, doing all the legwork musically.

Athelstan gives in and looks back at the singer, finds startling blue eyes fixed on him. It’s an illusion, of course, those eyes couldn’t see into the crowd for the lights even if all the smoke was cleared, but Athelstan has reached the front finally, and perhaps, perhaps, he is actually seen. He feels seen, noticed, regarded. The singer’s eyes stay on him, a wondering gaze. Athelstan has rarely felt himself to be the object of any attention, he wants to squirm away, look down shy, but he knows he mustn’t. And he can’t. This is not a gaze to turn away from. The lights change, flying up over the entire audience, giving the performers a swift chance to assess their audience. The singer blinks, frowns a little and looks almost to drag his eyes away from Athelstan’s. Athelstan sags in relief at the release and mourns the loss immediately. The crowd is screaming one name now, “Ragnar, Ragnar, Ragnar.” Athelstan didn’t know the band when he entered the room, he didn’t know anything, but now he starts to chant with the crowd the name of the blue-eyed whisperer, “Ragnar.” He mouths the word first, fitting his teeth to his bottom lip, his tongue to the back of his throat and then flicking down against the back of his teeth, “Ragnar.” He’s not heard the name before but it’s one that deserves to be shouted. Suddenly he can imagine himself forming that word in all sorts of ways, in anger, in fear, in frustration, in joy, in ecstasy. It’s strange to have something so new feel so familiar. He smiles as he shouts it because it’s like he just discovered a new friend and something in his voice must carry because Ragnar’s eyes flick back to him suddenly, shocked and intrigued. He smiles widely at Athelstan, nods in recognition before looking away again. Athelstan’s breath holds, caught, waits until the music stops finally in an almighty crescendo and the band cobbles together a bow in acknowledgement of the howling crowd to let it out, long and hollow. He’s thrilled and exhausted by the encounter, and, looking around, almost everyone in the crowd looks the same.


End file.
